THE CULTURE OF LOSING
The switch back to Taylor at QB makes Culley’s ‘future is now’ comments sound like gibberish
Davis Mills has a better completion percentage than Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Ryan Tannehill.
Mills, a rookie, has thrown for more touchdowns than Jimmy Garoppolo and Baker Mayfield.
Mills, the first draft pick of the Nick Caserio-era, threw for 312 yards, three TDs and no interceptions in a game the Texans should have won against Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots.
So what in the world is the NFL’s worst team thinking by benching Mills in Week 9 against the 1-7 Miami Dolphins?
Easy answer.
The Texans aren’t thinking. They’re just spouting the same gibberish that the franchise has been spewing throughout the Cal McNair-as-CEO era.
“We play to win,” head coach David Culley said Thursday. “Basically, our future is now.”
We play to win?
The Texans’ future is now? Um, say what?
Tyrod Taylor is the same good story that he was during training camp and in Week 1. But the often-injured Taylor is also 32 years old and an 11-year veteran. Which means that even if Taylor leads the horrible Texans to a win Sunday against the disappointing Dolphins, he will have as much in common with the Texans’ future as the Texans’ chances of winning Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
The fact that some on Kirby Drive have somehow convinced themselves that winning a few more games in 2021 means something for 2022 and beyond… well, I don’t know what to say.
It’s preposterous and illogical, and almost as absurd as Culley publicly saying that the 1-7 Texans — who have the worst point differential (-122) in the league and were down 38-0 at home last week — are playing to win and their future is now.
Also, why hasn’t someone told Jack Easterby — who could relay the message to McNair — that the best thing for the 2021 Texans is to lose as many games as possible, so they end up with a higher 2022 first-round draft pick and have a chance to win a divisional round playoff game before 2025?
“Winning’s a habit,” Culley said. “That’s part of good culture, is winning. Basically, we take it week to week, and what we do is we’re going to use the best guys that give us the best chance to win.”
So what the heck have the Texans been doing all season before this week?
And why were they playing all those second- and third-tier veterans that they recently got rid of ?
The Texans lost 40-0 to Buffalo. They were blasted 31-3 by Indianapolis. They were embarrassed 31-5 by Arizona.
Culture?
The Texans’ culture, under Culley, is losing. And if the team really wanted to win in 2022, it would already be quietly accepting résumés for its soon-to-beopen head coaching job.
I had little faith in January that Culley was the right hire for a rebuilding team that had turned off its franchise quarterback. Since then, Deshaun Watson has become untradeable because of his off-the-field problems, while Culley has consistently gotten it wrong, week after week and interview after interview.
The Texans have also become a complete contradiction in Week 9. They’ve put quotes around “rebuilding” and have everything in common with the horrible 2012-13 Astros but lack a master plan and don’t know how to construct a talent pipeline.
Am I saying that Mills is the Texans’ 2022 QB? Heck, no.
But Mills, the No. 67 overall pick of the 2021 draft, has completed 67 percent of his passes for 1,357 yards and has an 80.2 rating in seven games (six starts). And he’s not the reason the Texans are the laughingstock of the NFL again.
If Mills wasn’t good enough to take the field this early in his career, then why did the “play to win” Texans run him out on the field from Weeks 2-8?
Why didn’t Caserio go find another veteran QB to fill the temporary role while the Texans desperately waited for Taylor to save their season?
Most importantly, if the Texans believe in Mills so little now, why did Caserio burn the No. 67 pick on the unproven Stanford QB just six months ago?
“What are we trying to build here, in terms of our program?” Caserio said this week. “Everybody kind of gets caught up in culture, like, what does that exactly mean? … Culture’s about habits and about action. It’s about work. That’s what culture’s about. It’s being able to build up a series of habits, a series of actions, and putting those in place so you have something sustainable for a long period of time. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Like playing Mills for six starts, letting him rack up six consecutive losses to begin his NFL career, then taking his starting job away when a veteran QB who won’t be a Texan in a couple years is finally healthy again?
That’s the exact opposite of what a team truly rebuilding would do.
Factor in that the Texans are still overloaded with one-year vet contracts — even after J.J. Watt, Whitney Mercilus, Mark Ingram, Randall Cobb, Anthony Miller, Shaq Lawson, Bradley Roby and Vernon Hargreaves have turned in their NRG Stadium access cards — and it looks like some on the Texans’ staff are trying to win a few more games in 2021 to save their 2022 jobs.
Or prevent a locker-room mutiny as things get worse and worse, and fans start boycotting home games inside a half-empty NRG.
“This is bull- - - -. Such a joke,” Brandin Cooks tweeted on Oct. 27, the same day that the Texans traded the respected Ingram to New Orleans.
Cooks sounded like a growing majority of Texans fans.
And the majority of the 2021 Texans won’t be on the team in 2022.
Mills is either part of the future — even as an experienced young backup — or already a wasted pick, there’s no in-between.
The Texans are 5-19 since the 2019 season, which ended in the divisional round.
That’s the real culture on Kirby Drive.
That’s the Texans’ commitment to winning now.